Advances in medicine and science often include advances in the test hardware and techniques used to analyze materials and validate theories. In the biotech industry, there is an increasing need to determine the response of a given bacteria to pharmaceutical agents by reacting the bacteria with one or more antibiotics in a quick and efficient manner. In support of this need, the development of biotech hardware for testing continues at a rapid pace. When designing hardware and procedures for testing, there is a constant struggle between maintaining sterile conditions, accurately controlling test variables, and testing on a larger, more cost efficient scale.
The testing of various chemicals or agents, such as biological antigen-antibody pairs, often requires the manufacture and use of a test template having a plurality of agent or reagent containing cells. In some instances reagents are deposited into separate cells, after which a test material potentially containing one or more agents of interest is introduced into the cells. The interaction between agents and reagents can be observed (optically or otherwise) to determine if a certain agent is present in the test material. Often times, the concentration level of the agent present in the test material can be determined as well.
Typically, very small quantities of materials (e.g. agents and reagents) are used in the tests described above. The test templates or structures used to house the agents/reagents may be relatively small as well. Manufacturing techniques such as imprint lithography and photolithography can be used to manufacture test templates having very precise dimensions on the order of a few nano-meters (nms). These manufacturing techniques, however, can be very expensive to implement, and the challenges associated with alignment of components, repeatability and large scale manufacturing, etc. can be significant.
Frequently, quality control measures discard an unacceptable percentage of templates before they reach the test environment, or during the course of testing. As such, templates for chemical/biological testing are generally more expensive than they otherwise might be, as the manufacturers must recoup the costs for resources, time and precise tooling for the acceptable templates as well as the unacceptable templates. Also, given the fact that in most instances test templates for chemical/biological testing are a “one-time” use product, the costs per test can be very high.
In addition to the problems associated with the manufacture and use of test templates meeting strict test parameters for size, sterility, etc., current methods of chemical/biological testing are limited by the manner in which test materials are dispensed/distributed within a test template. For example, the precise placement of sample agents and/or reagents in the cells of a test template can be a time consuming, difficult task. Various techniques known in the art for the deposition of materials either lack the precision desired, or they are prohibitively complex and expensive to implement. This is especially true when multiple agents or reagents are deposited into a single test template in varying patterns. Even more complex is the challenge of placing two or more agents/reagents into a single cell.
Hence, there is a need for a process to provide a sensor template for chemical/biological testing that overcomes one or more of the drawbacks identified above.